Participatory Facilitation Training with Food Matters

Do you want to get better at facilitating spaces that allow for the meaningful participation of all voices – not just the loudest one?

Learn how to build your confidence in managing group dynamics and facilitating group processes, so you can create spaces that allow for the meaningful participation of everyone in the room.  

Facilitation is a key skill for those working in the community and voluntary sector. Far more than just writing a meeting agenda and inviting people to speak when it is their turn, it is instead the process of bringing people and groups together to share ideas, build relationships, make decisions, and work towards taking collective action.

Participatory facilitation is about creating spaces that enable people to feel seen, heard, and invited to participate. We do this to create richer and more effective spaces that give us new ideas and new directions to move in; ones that might not have been clear if only the loudest voices had been listened to. Doing so helps groups to make decisions that encompass as many voices and experiences as possible.

This training session is a workshop aimed at introducing you to some of the key principles of effective and productive participatory group facilitation. Hosted by our Participation and Engagement lead Ben Messer, who brings 30-years' experience in participatory community development, this training workshop considers some of the key approaches underpinning participatory facilitation, and how to apply them in groupwork settings.

How will you learn?

The training approach we use is very interactive and participatory, encouraging participants to engage in activities and learn by doing – hopefully having fun in the process! Your trainer, Ben, will demonstrate different facilitation methods and principles with you as a participant, allowing you to experience them first-hand. You’ll then explore together what worked and why; or, indeed, what didn’t. During the workshop, you’ll have a chance to do some facilitation yourself, to build your confidence as a facilitator.

Ben will also share some of his Top Tips based on over 30 years' experience as a facilitator and will leave you with a Facilitator’s Toolkit as a memory-nudge of what you’ve learned and a starting point for your own facilitation journey.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the Role of a Facilitator: Understand the purpose of facilitation and the role a facilitator plays in holding space

Build Confidence in Facilitation: Develop your confidence in facilitation through exploring different methods, activities, and ways of holding space

Create Participatory Spaces: Learn techniques that encourage participation and enable all voices to be heard.

Learn and Apply Facilitation Tools and Techniques: Experience and practise a range of participatory facilitation tools that can be adapted for different groups and settings.

Manage Group Dynamics: Learn and practice techniques for managing group spaces and dynamics

Who is this training for?

This training is a workshop for anyone who is interested in facilitating group processes, workshops, meetings, and more. It’s suitable for complete beginners, and also those who have some experience in facilitation but would like to dive deeper into participatory facilitation.

About your trainer – Ben Messer

Ben is a facilitator and trainer with participatory community development experience spanning over 3 decades, across 3 continents, and within many different communities and cultures. His practice began in the 1980s, spending a decade working on development aid projects in Sudan and Sri Lanka using approaches and tools based on Participatory Appraisal. Since then, he has applied his learning and experience to his work in the UK, focused on participatory community development, community cohesion and most recently on food systems and food partnerships. At Food Matters Ben leads our work on Community Engagement and Participation and for the past 15 years he has supported food partnerships across the UK as part of the Sustainable Food Places programme where he currently leads on Diversity, Representation and Justice.